Surgical procedures for extraction of a tooth in the edentulous bone of a patient's mouth and preparation of an implantation site therein for replacement of the extracted tooth with a customized restorative prosthesis, are generally known. The construction and implantation of such a restorative prosthesis, including (a) insertion of a metallic fixture into the edentulous bone and (b) the mounting of an abutment support thereon for profiling contact with the gingival gum tissue within the implantation site, is disclosed for example in the Ingber et al. patent aforementioned.
Various problems often arise in connection with the foregoing type of dental implant procedure because of tissue-healing disturbances, customized prosthesis construction difficulties, and tissue profiling to obtain a proper seating fit for the prosthesis within the surgically established implantation site. For example, in prior art, after a fixture has been inserted into edentulous bone in a first stage surgery it is left in place for the necessary healing time required to allow tissue to heal and grow over the implant site, whereupon an incision is made in a second stage surgery and a healing abutment mounted on an exposed protruding hexagonal portion of the fixture. In the prior art, in order to register the implanted fixture position for the purpose of making an impression, it is necessary to remove the healing abutment. This causes tissue healing disturbances. Also, when it is desirable to provide customized prosthesis construction of the type described in the above mentioned patent it is impossible to read information from the positioning of the healing abutment as was done in the prior art which employs standardized permanent abutments. It is therefore an important object of the present invention to avoid or minimize the foregoing problems as well as to reduce restorative rehabilitation time associated with the dental implant procedure.